Case Study: CBC website

The Central Bank of Cyprus tender for Enterprise Content Management for the Central Bank needed a bilingual (English and Greek) site that could be easily managed and updated. In addition the solution needed to offer a range of new services, including dynamic checking of savings bonds, currency conversion, events calendar and subscription to E-mail lists for the automatic dispatch of the Bank’s news and announcements.

The Central Bank of Cyprus was established in 1963, the main functions of the Central Bank are:

• definition and implementation of monetary policy (including credit policy);
• conduct of exchange rate policy, within the framework of the exchange rate policy formulated by the Council of Ministers after obtaining the opinion of the Bank;
• holding and management of official international reserves;
• supervision of banks;
• promotion, regulation and oversight of the smooth operation of payment and settlement systems;
• performance of the tasks of banker and financial agent of the government; and
• participation as a member in international monetary and economic organisations.

Central Bank of Cyprus has launched in the fourth quarter of 2002 a new main website developed and powered by NQcontent. The former site was largely an informational static site, the new site is designed dynamic with the ability for the banks department to quickly add new material and in particular new site sections to reflect the changing financial markets. Additional contracts have been awarded to add new functionality during 2003 and 2004.

The Central Bank of Cyprus’ new website was designed and developed entirely by NetQuest and powered by NQcontent. The principal aims of the redesign were to provide a content and functionality enriched site with a design that supports and maintains the Central Bank’s corporate brand values, a structure and interface that is logical and straight forward to use, and a site which could be updated and maintained by the Central Bank of Cyprus themselves through an easy to use content managed environment.  The site is bilingual, with the content provided in both Greek and English. In addition, new services were introduced such as the checking of savings bonds, currency conversion, events calendar and subscription to E-mail lists for the automatic dispatch of the Bank’s news and announcements via electronic mail. The site is supported and hosted by NetQuest.   The project was won through a competitive tendering process.

• The Central Bank now has a powerful dynamic architecture that can easily be extended to add new functions and integrations
• The online brand is protected by the complete separation of content from presentation
• The Dynamic Bilingual capability 'remembers' the users language and automatically provides the site in the correct format on subsequent visits.
• Bilingual conversion is dynamically applied to all content items, including text related images
• The system is linked to savings bond databases for dynamic real time generation of bond enquiry information